My 2 cents

My 2 cents...

There will be a big place for desktop puters & mice for a long time to come. Personally, Touch may be nice or neat but, I'm quite w/out it; although there is a place for it in some devices but not sitting @ my desk poking @ my 24", thanks. But, in many environments, from domestic to Education, business, science, powerful, robust, capable desktops will have a major place. Yes, A goal of Win8 is that it can play on all platforms. The whole Start conversation, frankly, eludes me... discovering a few 'tricks', customizing & personalizing investigating & learning, I'm fine w/ Win8; it's, certainly, a wee bit different but, @ the end of the day just another version of a computer OS. But, I'm 'old school' & maybe that's the explanation... I live on a desktop, I travel from there, I work there, I work & move from there & back, again. I don't get APPs. Fun & cute, sure but, why? I find I keep asking myself, why? Aside from them not seeming (YET, I guess) to be finished, complete, refined, blah, blah, blah... but, why? I can't seem to get past finding nothing I could do, see or find, all along and still can. Weather, videos, photos, E-mail, games, music, ad infinitum... never needed an 'APP' for any of it and still don't. Sure had always heard & known of 'APPs' for phones & stuff, all of which, stuck me as 'novelty' items, bells-n-whistles for trendy folks, niche markets & kids. For me, on my desktop, they strike me as unnecessary, redundant, a useless distraction & leave me asking, why?

There are going to be many of us that will always have our desktops or in my case our laptops without touch screens. Metro is just this ugly interface (yes I did change to a slightly less gaudy color) with big buttons. Reminds me of those phones we used to see for the seeing impaired with the very large square number buttons on them. No thanks. I also do not miss the Start Menu. As I find something I feel I need on the Desktop, I pin it someplace there from the big keyboard that is Metro, or I suppose on occasion open something from Metro. I just don't see myself there a lot. I like to view my landscapes in the background when not actually covering my screen with windows, not some big gray (insert whatever color you choose here) push button filled screen.

I do like the speed displayed by Win 8. The Boot and Shutdown are impressive. I believe memory management is more refined and more controlled. I believe IE 10 is a big leap forward (Desktop version, not Metro version. I think everyone knows my views on that) There are still a couple of compatibility issues to work out. I should not have to use Compatibility Mode to get the Enter Key to do the carriage return thing while using the full WYSIWYG Editor. (Even this does not work in the other forum. I have to still use the Standard Editor)

Yes I believe MS will have to really sell this OS. I believe offering some of these changes as a SP for Win 7 would satisfy some of the negativity out there. I do believe there are some significant steps in the right direction and a couple of less than significant steps IMHO.

Windows 7 Desktop Users

Originally Posted by Ted Myers

Yes I believe MS will have to really sell this OS. I believe offering some of these changes as a SP for Win 7 would satisfy some of the negativity out there. I do believe there are some significant steps in the right direction and a couple of less than significant steps IMHO.

Right now, IMHO, performance of Win8 will be the deciding factor for those Win7 users who dislike the Metro GUI. The other factor of course is selling price. I very much like the performance of Win8 and hope it improves when finally released. Microsoft may well have a hard time convincing Win7 (desktop) users to purchase Win8 if the selling price is deemed too steep. Such users will ask themselves:
Why upgrade if I have to customize the desktop when I am perfectly content with my Win7 setup?

Like Dr. Who, my main motivation in upgrading to Win 8 is for support reasons. I also agree the main advantage of Windows 8 over Windows 7 is speed. My desktop is more than fast enough with Windows 7 but my laptop has a noticeable speed improvement with Windows 8, so I probably will upgrade that when Windows 8 is released. If not for the need to keep up for reasons of support, I probably would not even upgrade the laptop though. Its slower on Win 7 but not enough to justify the $90 or so Microsoft will be asking for the upgrade.

After using Win8 CP for a couple of days I find myself using Metro 1% of the time and Desktop 99% of the time. With that in mind, is there a way to make Win8 boot up to the Desktop instead of to Metro? Hope there is an answer.

I do not spend much time in Metro either. I do not see a need. If I do have a need to find something then I do, but I do not have the need very often. I spend 99.9% of my time in Win 8 CP and 99 % of that time in Desktop so I guess that would be 99.99% of my time in Win 8 CP desktop. Darn, now my brain cell is overheating again. Thanks a lot.

The manual way to do that "jump to desktop" thing, could be way over the head of 'some' users.
I put everything needed into a little folder with a batch file to do the actual install.
If anyone needs that, just drop me a PM.

The batch file runs in less than three seconds and the job is done.

I'm basically lazy and I always look for the simplest and fastest way to get things done. rofl

never needed an 'APP' for any of it and still don't. Sure had always heard & known of 'APPs' for phones & stuff, all of which, stuck me as 'novelty' items, bells-n-whistles for trendy folks, niche markets & kids. For me, on my desktop, they strike me as unnecessary, redundant, a useless distraction & leave me asking, why?

The reason is money, and fear. I hear from all my podcast sources, Windows Weekly most prominent, that the Windows Phone 7 OS easily makes the most sense to adapt to other up and coming touch devices...just as Apple did. However Phone 7 is the best touch interface that has the fewest users and is not gaining much market share at all.
So what has a bull's load of market share and maybe isn't dead on arrival when it comes to gaining touch device market share?
There's the rhetorical question.

Somehow I'm struggling to see how touch will catch on in the corporate world, despite what we see on James Bond and the like. I don't know about America, but in the UK we have pretty fierce Health & Safety laws for workers, and surely using a KB and mouse will cause fewer injuries than spending hours at a time with your arm stretched out at a screen?

Somebody wrote : There is a way to reasonably quickly go through the Metro to the Desktop.

My way was to move the Desktop to the top position and then hit ENTER every time I boot it. What could be easier ? LOL ! JP.
NB: Yes, I just moved over to the W-8 machine and that is all that is required.